Judicial integrity – a case the Court cannot ignore

Why in the News

A sitting judge of the Supreme Court of India, Justice Sandeep Mehta, wrote three letters to the Chief Justice of India (CJI) on 2, 10 and 17 August seeking the immediate transfer of the Acting Chief Justice of the Rajasthan High Court, Justice Sanjeev Prakash Sharma. The letters allege victimisation of judges, maladministration, improper shifting of cases to his own Bench, and nepotism in appointments to the Permanent Lok Adalat. The last of the three records concern at the CJI’s inaction, with Justice Sharma due to retire on 26 September. The stated response is that allegations cannot be treated as findings and must be dealt with strictly through the established institutional mechanism. The tension is that the established mechanism is precisely what has not worked, since the appointment system carries no published criteria and the removal machinery has never removed a judge.

What is the “master of the roster” power?

1. What the power is: The Chief Justice of a court holds the exclusive administrative authority to constitute Benches and to assign cases among them.
2. Where it comes from: It rests on convention and on the Supreme Court’s own rulings treating the Chief Justice as first among equals for administrative purposes, not on any statutory provision.
3. Its reach in this case: The power covers roster allocation for the whole court, and it is exercised by the Acting Chief Justice wherever the office of Chief Justice is vacant.

What do the letters allege?

1. Interference with the roster: Cases were allegedly shifted improperly to the Acting Chief Justice’s own Bench, in misuse of the master of the roster power.
2. Pressure on colleagues: Judges were allegedly intimidated with the threat of retributive measures including transfers, on the basis of claimed proximity to the CJI.
3. Favouritism at the Bar: The letters refer to specific instances of alleged favouritism towards a chosen few among the lawyers.
4. Appointments outside the court: Nepotism is alleged in appointments to the Permanent Lok Adalat, the statutory body that decides disputes relating to public utility services and whose award is final and binding.
5. The state of the record: There has been no official denial of the reports concerning the contents of the letters, and Justice Sharma has publicly denied the accusations as baseless.

What is the record behind the appointment itself?

1. A long acting tenure: The High Court functioned under an Acting Chief Justice for about 11 months, which is not a sound institutional arrangement for a court of that size.
2. An earlier transfer out: Justice Sharma was transferred to the Patna High Court in 2022.
3. A rejected repatriation: His request to return to the Rajasthan High Court was rejected by the Collegium in 2023, which instead proposed his transfer to the Punjab and Haryana High Court.
4. A reversal without a stated reason: He was nonetheless retransferred to the Rajasthan High Court in 2025 and then allowed to function as Acting Chief Justice with wide administrative and judicial powers.

How did the institution respond?

1. The Bar acted first: Lawyers staged a sit-in protest on the High Court premises, following which Justice Sharma opted out from hearing cases.
2. The Collegium moved on the vacancy: On 31 August the Supreme Court Collegium recommended the appointment of Justice Sanjay Agrawal as the new Chief Justice of the Rajasthan High Court, and that appointment has since been made.
3. The complaint itself drew no step: For several weeks no cogent step was initiated on the letters, with the retirement date approaching.
4. The trust cost is measurable: Transparency International’s 2002 report, based on a household survey, identified the judiciary as the second-most corrupt institution in certain South Asian countries including India.

Why does the appointment system produce this?

1. There are no criteria at all: The selection of judges proceeds without published standards against which a candidate can be assessed or a rejection explained.
2. The Collegium and the Executive must collaborate: The unavoidable joint working of the Collegium and the Union Executive under the present system makes appointments partisan, opaque and often arbitrary.
3. The filter cannot do the job asked of it: A process built this way is incapable of identifying the cleanest and most meritorious candidates.
4. The link to corruption is direct: Corruption in the judiciary is inseparable from the method of selecting candidates for judicial office, so the accountability problem starts at entry rather than at removal.

Why does the removal machinery not work?

1. The inquiry statute is dormant: The Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968 is inadequate to tackle judicial corruption and has for all practical purposes become defunct.
2. A criminal investigation cannot begin: In K. Veeraswami vs Union of India (1991) the Supreme Court held that the permission of the CJI is a necessary precondition for registering a First Information Report against a judge of the higher judiciary. The requirement is circular in practice, because the police will not seek permission without clinching evidence and cannot obtain that evidence without investigating.
3. Impeachment has failed as a route: Removal on the ground of proved misbehaviour or incapacity, as provided by Articles 124(4) and 217(1)(b) of the Constitution, has not worked in practice.
4. The internal route has no teeth: The in-house mechanism adopted by the Supreme Court in 1999 has not proved fault-free or effective.
5. The legislative fix lapsed: The Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill passed the Lok Sabha in 2012 and lapsed with the dissolution of the 15th Lok Sabha in 2014, and the later effort to revive it with changes remained a non-starter.

What do other systems do differently?

1. Canada invites applications: Candidates apply for judicial office rather than being identified privately, so the pool and the criteria are both visible before a selection is made.
2. The United Kingdom uses an independent body: Judicial selection is conducted by a body separate from both the judiciary and the executive, which breaks the circularity of judges choosing judges.
3. Neither is currently available in India: Both arrangements remain unthinkable in the Indian setting, which is why the accountability argument keeps returning to the removal stage rather than the entry stage.

How have earlier Chief Justices responded to comparable situations?

1. The 1990 precedent, advice to step back: When an inquiry was underway against Justice V. Ramaswami for alleged misconduct, the then CJI advised him to take leave and keep away from judicial work.
2. The 1993 precedent, work withheld after a failed motion: The impeachment motion against him failed in Parliament following the Congress party’s strategic abstention. He attempted to resume judicial work with about nine months of tenure remaining, and the then CJI refused to allocate any cases to him for hearing.
3. The recent precedent, immediate transfer: After partly burnt currency notes were reportedly found at the Delhi residence of Justice Yashwant Varma, the then CJI quickly transferred him to the Allahabad High Court, where he was practically not allocated judicial work.
4. The Court’s own statement of the duty: In XXX vs Union of India (2025) the Supreme Court emphasised the responsibility of the CJI in matters relating to judicial integrity and allegations of corrupt practices.

Challenges to judicial accountability in India

1. Asset declaration rests on resolution rather than statute: Judges of the higher judiciary declare their assets under an internal resolution, so a failure to declare carries no legal consequence. Eg. Publication of the declarations on the Supreme Court’s website began only in 2025.
   The Fix: Place the declaration requirement in statute, with an annual filing deadline and a public register maintained by an authority outside the court.
2. The selection record stays outside disclosure: The reasons recorded for an elevation, a rejection or a transfer are not published, so a questionable appointment cannot be traced to a reasoning. Eg. The 2023 rejection of a repatriation and the 2025 reversal of that position were never explained on the record.
   The Fix: Publish the Collegium’s recorded reasons for every recommendation and every transfer at the time the decision is communicated.
3. The in-house procedure runs to no timeline: An internal inquiry proceeds at the discretion of the CJI, with no fixed stage limits and no published outcome. Eg. The procedure can end in advice to resign, leaving no finding on the record at all.
   The Fix: Fix statutory timelines for each stage of the inquiry and require publication of the finding, with reasons, on completion.
4. Removal depends on parliamentary arithmetic: The final step turns on the numbers in both Houses rather than on the inquiry’s finding, so a party decision can defeat a proved case. Eg. No judge of the higher judiciary has ever been removed under the constitutional procedure.
   The Fix: Make an adverse inquiry finding trigger the automatic withdrawal of judicial work, so the consequence does not wait on a vote.

Conclusion

Two failures are operating at once and neither can substitute for the other. Entry into the higher judiciary is decided without published criteria, and exit from it is governed by a statute that has never produced a removal, which leaves everything in between resting on how quickly one officeholder chooses to act. That is not accountability but discretion, and discretion is what the present controversy has tested. The measure of what follows is whether a complaint carrying verifiable material now generates a recorded step with a date attached to it, rather than a retirement that closes the file.

Back2Basics: The Collegium system

1. What it is: The mechanism through which the higher judiciary selects its own judges, evolved through the Supreme Court’s judgments rather than from the text of the Constitution.
2. Its origin: The Second Judges Case (1993) and the Third Judges Case (1998) read the word “consultation” in Articles 124 and 217 as requiring the concurrence of the CJI, and fixed the collegium’s composition.
3. Its composition: The CJI and the four senior most judges of the Supreme Court decide Supreme Court appointments; the CJI and the two senior most judges decide High Court appointments and transfers.
4. The failed replacement: The National Judicial Appointments Commission, created by the 99th Constitutional Amendment, was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2015 as violating judicial independence, leaving the collegium in place.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2019] Consider the following statements: 1. The- motion to impeach a Judge of the Supreme Court of India cannot be rejected by the Speaker of the Lok Sabha as per the Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968. 2. The Constitution of India defines and gives details of what Constitutes ‘incapacity and proved misbehaviour’ of the Judges of the Supreme Court of India. 3. The details of the process of impeachment of the Judges of the Supreme Court of India are given in the Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968. 4. If the motion for the impeachment of a Judge is taken up for voting, the law requires the motion to be backed by each House of the Parliament and supported by a majority of total membership of that House and by not less than two-thirds of total members of that House present and voting. Which of the statements given above is/are correct? (a) 1 and 2 (b) 3 only (c) 3 and 4 only (d) 1, 3 and 4 (c)”